“This is something we’ve never had to deal with in the history of the show,” he told her, without specifying how the relationship was “inappropriate.” (Bachelor Jake Pavelka, who claims he has never been cheated on, was shocked by the news. “You’re kidding me,” he said. “I don’t know what to say … I’m hurt; I’m disappointed. I felt like I’ve been taken for the fool. I didn’t see this coming.”)

Though Papa remained stone-faced on the show, she is now lashing out for how the show portrayed her.

“It seems they want the ratings!” she tells ET.

She says the scandal has seeped “into my personal life. I have a 7-year-old little boy at home that I want to look up to me, and to have this blatant lie out there perpetuated by the show itself, it’s hurtful. It’s scary to think what my son will think of me.”

She insists she merely befriended a male producer (who has since been fired) — but nothing more. “I would absolutely call him a friend,” she says. “A good friend.”

After seeing Monday’s show, she says she is now afraid she’ll “be portrayed as a cheater.”

Adds Papa, “It really comes down to my son. Why would you go on national television and throw a mom under the bus like that?”